First Moose

Day 41

Date: 11.06.2022

CDT Mile: Mile 943.6

Miles hiked: 15.3 miles / 24.5 km

Elevations: ascent 3'245 feet (Aufstieg 989 m) / descent 3'530 feet (Abstieg 1'076 m)

Camping at: 12'211 feet / 3'722 m

Even though we only have 2 days to get to Lake City my pack is heavy again. I packed out a lot of good food, but that is heavy. I have 2 burritos for lunch today and two for tomorrow! Dehydrated meals for dinner and muffins and bagels for bf and a whole Mozzarella to add to my meals. Now, on the steep uphills, I wish I would have packed lighter! I will definitely also get rid of some of my stuffs in Lake City. Don't think I need the ice axe or the microscopes anymore. Also I have some waterproof bags I don't need anymore and a sleepingbag inliner I want to send ahead (currently I have a broken down sleepingbag which I kinda fixed, a down sleepingbag inliner and a cotton sleepingbag inliner! The cotton one I want to send ahead).

The trail however has changed a lot since we joined the Colorado Trail (CT). It's a nice beautiful path like we had on the PCT and there are sometimes switchbacks, not all the times though. Sometimes the trail just goes straight up the hill, not messing around with turns! But otherwise there are no blowdowns so far and the bushes, which cut our legs before, are nicely cut. If the trail continuous like this, I will swap back to my shorts and send the long pants with my bounce box ahead too. We stop for lunch at a lake, already hiked 10 miles. 'Worm', another thru hiker we have met just shortly before, breaks with us. As my pack is so heavy and I have too much food, I give him 2 of my 4 burritos and a slice of pizza I carried out. He is super happy and I am too😁 My pack is a little lighter now!

As we plan to hitch in and out of Lake City the same day and do laundry and resupply, we only plan to hike 14.5 miles today. Not staying in town safes a lot of money, specially as Colorado is quite pricey. This is also the last water source for a longer stretch but when reaching the river, there is no place to camp. So we are forced to hike on a little further and carry out more water to dry camp. The weather has changed again around 1pm. It was suuuper hot, and then suddenly the clouds turn up and it looks like its gonna rain. But we reached the camp without getting rained on. And on this last 4.5 miles I have seen 2 mooses, the first one's so far. They were a little away, I hope to see some more closer (not too close though!). It was all in all another nice day in Colorado. It rained on us a little during the night, but the tents were dry again in the morning.

I'm already looking forward to Salida, crossing the 1'000 mile marker and doing more miles than 15 a day! I wanna move forward!😁